Its very very simple: PR, its as simple as that, Valve has good PR and everyone loves them for some reason(I envy all the people who say valve is nice since they told me to fuck off twice) and everyone hates EA because its EA.
Um no, it is because Origin is currently an unpolished t*rd that is forced on us by EA if we wish to play their games.
EA tried to get us to use Origin of our own free will via it's Digital Distribution system however it's list of benefits was no where near the worth the effort, after all why download install and run EADM and then put up with the nonsense of limited installs a crappy back up system and shock horror the potential of having to deal with EA customer support, when I could just go in to a store buy a game and just install it.
So shock horror EADM failed to do what EA wanted it to do, so they tweaked it, renamed it and then launched it with BF3 as a requirement to be installed to play the game. Now that sound to different to what Valve did with Steam and HL2 and yes it got a lot of flak for a prolonged install, a tedious update, dodgy servers and the fact you need Steam to play HL2. The thing is that was a decade ago and while many may have forgotten the issues Steam has the fact that Steam had them does not excuse EA for having issues with Origin.
- The fact that it is still Beta despite having been out in one form or another for five years.
- The fact that updates aren't done automatically it asks you to update your games then updates them. The Origin update system is even worse, as it closes Origin, starts a full download and then a full install system and then places a new desktop icon and if you don't notice it will set itself to start automatically when you boot your computer. It will also ask you to re insert your user name and password. Steam does all this as a background service and only requires a restart.
- Server downtime is a joke, more correctly what Origin does when it can't connect is a joke. Steam tells you their is an issue connecting (although chances of seeing that message are next to none.) Origin plays dumb and tells you that it is your fault for not putting in the correct user name or password.
- Origin accounts being linked to EA forum accounts, frankly that is beyond a joke. Bans on the forums result in you being unable to access games.... really?
The fact is Origin is no worse than the issues Steam had at launch but that doesn't mean it can be forgiven. If this was ten years ago and Steam had just launched then it could get away with its problems, but it isn't. It has been 'launched' in to a market that is dominated by a system that does everything it does and it does it easily, without issue and in a polished way. Then you have to consider that Origin has been in development for five years so it is even less forgiveable that it has the issues that it has.
Put it this way, I have one game that require Origin and every day after an update the torrent sites get checked for updates to the Origin by pass cracks. That is the worse recommendation for Origin that I can think of, I have the option to use it will I use it? No!. The same situation exists for Steam, cracks that by pass it exist, but I am happy to use Steam.
